The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1013: Mallory McMorrow and Tracy Alloway: A Self-Inflicted Crisis
Thu, 03 Apr 2025
The market plunge is just pure Trump chaos, and perfectly matches his record as a businessman. From his numerous bankruptcies and many failures—including his airline, his casinos, his university, his water, and his steaks—he's been running one long con. And the supposedly smart people who should have known better put him back in power, somehow thinking he would never do something like destroy global trade. Meanwhile, in Michigan, where there have already been job losses directly caused by Trump's tariff war, State Senator Mallory McMorrow announced she's running for the U.S. Senate—saying she's had enough of the leadership and the bullshit in DC. Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Mallory McMorrow join Tim Miller. show notes Tracy's Bloomberg podcast, "Odd Lots" Mallory McMorrow's Instagram Mallory's new book, “HATE WON’T WIN: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than We Found It.”
Chapter 1: What is the economic impact of Trump's tariff policies?
Hey, guys, we've got a great double header for you today. Mallory McMorrow announced she was running for Senate yesterday. So I'm planning to have her on to discuss the campaign and more. And then I wanted to bring in somebody who had real expertise on what's happening with the markets and the tariffs following yesterday's Liberation Day announcement. And so we brought in Tracy Alloway.
who's a very insightful observer of what is happening in the markets. She writes a newsletter and does a podcast with my guy, Joe Weisenthal. So she, I think, is going to educate us. I'm going to have more economy experts on in the coming weeks and months because that is what Donald Trump has thrust upon us. And so look forward to that. And we'll probably have Tracy back when the time is right.
But before we get to it, since we got so wonky and nerdy in that first segment, I want to emote with you guys for a second. It is fucking insane that we are here with regards to the stock market and the economy. I mean, as I am taping this right now, the NASDAQ is down 5%, almost 6%, really. The S&P 500 is down 4.5%. This is all self-inflicted. None of this had to happen.
There is not a bubble that has burst. There is not some issue in the credit markets. There were not a bunch of credit default swaps being bundled. This is not the big short. This is not a global recession. This is not a pandemic. It is just Trump chaos. Any pain you have in your retirement account or your 401k right now is only due to Trump chaos.
If you're one of the people who are going to lose their job over this, it's only due to Trump chaos. And here's the thing. Trump's Whole career has been failures like this. This was utterly predictable across every metric. We screamed it from the rooftops here at the Bulwark and elsewhere. He bankrupted a casino. How do you go bankrupt in the casino business?
Trump steaks, Trump airlines, Trump water, fail, fail, fail. He's failed at everything. He was a horrific businessman. He was a good marketer. And we can be honest, he's been a pretty good political manipulator. That's what he's good at. He's a con man. He's good at conning people. But we are all about to experience unbelievable pain, unbelievable economic pain.
Because people who should have been smarter than this went along with the con. People who should have known better, who should have known Trump for who he is, went along with this and decided to take this risk because they thought maybe they might get a little tax cut. Or maybe there might be a little regulation cut that might help their business. Well, guess what?
All of your fucking businesses are going into the tank right now. And it's hard to see a way out. Tracy Alloway will talk about that in a little bit more dispassionate way up next. She'll educate us, get us smart on what's happening. After that, we'll get to Mallory McMorrow. Very much look forward to it. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We are on the morning following Liberation Day and we have been liberated from the value of our 401ks. I want to talk about that and much more with one of my favorite finance journalists, Tracy Alloway. She's a co-host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast alongside the stalwart, Joe Weisenthal, and also author of the Odd Lots newsletter. How are you doing, Tracy?
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Chapter 2: How are the markets reacting to the latest economic announcements?
All right, let's talk about the tariffs. More uplifting news coming from our new oligarchs, our leaders in Washington. This is a news item from your state. Stellantis is temporarily laying 900 U.S. workers in Indiana and Michigan off after it opted to idle production at two plants in Canada and Mexico in response to the Trump tariffs. And that's just one example.
What else are you seeing about the economic stewardship from these guys?
I mean, that... Let's just think about that for a second. I said yesterday in an interview that Michigan stands to be hit harder than just about any other state in the country based on Trump's chaotic tariff policy. And it hasn't even been 24 hours. He announced this, he brought out big charts and then complained about the wind and he didn't want the charts to be blown away.
And almost immediately, 900 people in Michigan have lost their jobs. Like, just think about that. This is not temporary pain or whatever Trump is trying to claim that it is where... we're going to be liberated from the rest of the world.
This is 900 people who don't know if they're going to be able to pay their mortgage and don't know if they're going to be able to cover healthcare costs today, one day later. If that doesn't tell you that this is terrible policy, it's immediate and it's painful and it's devastating to our state.
I assume you understand better than me can maybe the interstate commerce relationship with Canada and Michigan might be one of the reasons why you're in Michigan will be hardest hit. And when, when we did the live event together a couple of months ago, we're trying to block that out since it was before the election.
So I don't want to bring back bad memories, but I, I kind of, I hadn't actually spent a lot of time in Detroit. I loved it. I thought I really loved our little weekend in Detroit that I had with my family. But we we, I didn't quite realize that you just take the bridge over to Windsor there. Yeah, you could see it.
Did you see it?
Yeah, I saw it. When we were there, there was a run, like a marathon maybe, or a half marathon, and people ran into Canada and back into Michigan.
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